US gas demand to grow 40 % by 2025

Jun 30, 2004 02:00 AM

At the Latin American and Caribbean Gas Summit conference being held in Trinidad, Guy Caruso head of the US Energy
Information Administration said that natural gas use in the United States will grow substantially over the next 25
years, and natural gas demand will increase by more than 40 % between now and 2025.
The United States will depend more heavily on gas imports, Caruso said. Domestic production will cover only about
three-quarters of that amount, he said. Last year, domestic production made up 86 % of natural gas use.
"Production will not keep up," Caruso added.

The increased dependence on imports is good news for a country like Trinidad, which supplied the United States with
more than 75 % of its LNG imports last year. LNG made up only 3 % of total natural gas use in the United States last
year, but is expected to grow to 15 % by 2025, Caruso said.
Trinidad, which supplied the United States with more than 75 % of its LNG imports last year, is ready to invest to
increase its share of the market to the US, and is in talks with New Orleans-based McMoRan Exploration to invest in a
proposed LNG regasification plant proposed for the Gulf of Mexico, Trinidad Energy Minister Eric Williams said.

Trinidad signed a Memorandum of Understanding with McMoRan Exploration that could lead to the government taking an
equity stake in McMoRan's proposed LNG receiving terminal offshore Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, Williams
said.
The MoU with McMoRan would involve the company's so-called Main Pass Energy Hub, which includes a 1 bn cfpd, $ 440 mm
LNG receiving terminal and salt dome gas storage. McMoRan has said it could deliver a combined 2.5 bn cfpd from the
terminal and storage. Located 37 miles east of Venice, Louisiana, Main Pass could be operational in late 2007.

McMoRan spokesman Bill Collier confirmed the company was in talks with various LNG suppliers about the new plant, to
be located 37 miles (59 km) off the coast. An application to build the terminal has been filed with the US Coast
Guard, Collier said.
Natural gas is converted into LNG by undergoing a supercooling process. It is then put on tankers and shipped to its
destination, where it is converted back to gas form at regasification terminals. There are only four regasification
terminals in the United States, located in Everett, Massachusetts; Cove Point, Maryland; Elba Island, Georgia; and
Lake Charles, Louisiana. New terminals approval have been delay due to environmental concerns.

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